The Cleft Palate Center has a three-fold mission: treatment, education, and research. Research projects in the past year have stressed anatomy and physiology of the vocal mechanism, otological aspects of the cleft condition, and techniques for assessing in greater depth the velopharyngeal valving mechanism and its relationship to various speech parameters. This work will continue in the coming year with an additional study designed to compare results obtained through the use of two different surgical procedures.